SHENZHEN will be connected to other Pearl River Delta cities within a one-hour circle by a high-speed rail network by 2020, according to Qian Chunyang, a deputy to the National People’s Congress (NPC).

The high-speed rail network will connect all 21 prefecture-level cities in Guangdong Pro-vince.

In a speech at the plenary meeting of the Guangdong delegation to the 13th NPC, Qian, who is also the chief engineer with Guangzhou Railway Technology Development Institute, a research institute under Guangzhou Railway Group Corp., said the high-speed rail network will reach 2,319 kilometers in Guangdong by 2020, an around 50 percent increase over the present length.

At present, the network has connected 16 prefecture-level cities, and work in another five cities, namely Heyuan, Meizhou, Yangjiang, Zhanjiang and Maoming, is under way. A total of 12 railways, including five high-speed rails, link Guangdong with other provinces.

According to Qian, Guangdong plans to initiate eight high-speed rail projects in the coming three years, including five projects that will kick off this year.

Work on the Jiangmen-Shenzhen section of the Shenzhen-Maoming high-speed rail, the Shantou-Shanwei and Longchuan-Meizhou rails, as well as the Meizhou-Longyan rail and a rail link between Foshan and Danzhao, will commence this year.

The railway network will reach 5,340 kilometers in Guangdong, 1,134 kilometers, or 27 percent, more than the present length. Particularly, the coverage of high-speed rail will be increased by 50 percent to 2,319, kilometers, accounting for 43.4 percent of total railway length.

Travelers from Shenzhen can reach Beijing and other North China cities in only nine hours, Yangtze River cities in 11 hours and southwestern cities, including Chengdu, Chongqing and Kunming, in six hours.